The renowned author of Among the Believers and Beyond Belief asserts in his fine essay (link) some noteworthy contentions, some of which can be our Questions for Debate:"So what impels the tiny minority of young men and women from immigrant communities to volunteer themselves to ‘jihad’ and to almost certain self-destruction, or young women to abscond from their families and from European reality to become jihadi brides?""It was an article of 6th and 7th Century Arab faith that everything before it was wrong, heretical," writes Mr. Naipaul. "There was no room for the pre-Islamic past." Can this explain to some notable degree the strong desire the Islamic State has to destroy ancient cultural antiquities and artifacts?